Hire the Right Realtor

Why is it important to hire the right Realtor for the job of selling your home?

That’s right- It is a job and you should treat the process of selecting a Realtor as if it were a job interview.

Communication is the number one complaint consumers have with the selling process. If you expect to have good communication after the house is placed on the market you might want to interview the agent and test those skills. Some agents are excellent at the interview process so you might want to ask some hard questions!

After you list my home will I be dealing with you? Or, are you going to push me off on your assistant, listing manager, or team member?

Believe it or not, some agents do this because they treat their business as a numbers game. They feel like they have to get in front of as many people as possible to get a large number of listings to maintain a certain monthly income.

Generally, these agents will try to impress you with how many listings they have. They will tell you, we list a home every 3 days, or I have 80 listings. Think about how much work that would be to manage 80 listings? No one person could manage that and still take your phone calls. Don’t be marginalized and shucked off to an inexperienced associate or non-licensed assistant.

Does you office operate as a team concept? Or do your associates list and sell homes independently?

One of the quickest ways to build up a real estate office is to organize into a team concept. That is where a realtor or broker associates with other realtors and they share costs by working together. In some cases the team manager only takes listings working exclusively with sellers while all of the other agents work exclusively with buyers.

This can be problematic because it gives the impression that the team leader has a tremendous amount of listings. Think about it, if 10 to 20 agents were turning over all of their listings to one person, that person should have a large number of listings. If that is the case who services those listings- the team leader? Not in most cases!

They will try to sell you on specialization in the market place like a doctor or lawyer. That is nonsense! Doctors and lawyers go to school for years to learn their craft. In fact, both fields are so complicated in nature and scope that one could spend a lifetime working in a remote unknown specialized niche.

The real estate business is different. Your Realtor better be able to work both sides of the deal. Negotiating can be difficult, its always important to consider your opponent’s motivation and goals. You want someone on your side that has an understanding of the process from both the buying and selling points of view.

It is nonsensical to think that real estate agents can specialize in only the buyer or seller side of the transaction. Agents may segregate themselves based on a preference for working with buyers or sellers but trust me every agent fluently knows both sides of the deal.

Who covers your calls when you are out of town? What systems do you have in place to make sure offers on my property are presented to me in a timely manner?

Some of those top-flight listing agents actually get so busy they forget or just don’t realize they received an offer on your home and it never gets presented to you for your consideration. I have seen this happen with my own eyes!

Thus, when choosing an agent verify that they have a defined plan or system for managing your listing when they are busy or out of town. You must be sure all offers are going to be submitted for your review within a timely manner.

At what point do you start to recommend a price change if my house hasn’t sold? Will you be personally be making that phone call or will you ask your assistant or office manager to do that job?

If you don’t get personal service from that listing agent throughout the listing you are probably not going to be satisfied. Remember, you are interviewing the agent not their team. You don’t want too many cooks in the kitchen!

Can I have your cell number in the event I need to contact you after business hours?

Your Realtor should provide you with an after hours point of contact. If your Realtor won’t give you their cell number its probably because they are intending on deligating your business to their office staff.

Don’t sacrifice personalized service to get the biggest name in real estate to list your home! Because you will probably wind up with the biggest name in real estate’s assistant throughout most of the process!